The present invention relates to a protection implement which is particularly suitable for the practice of sports such as, for example, car racing, motorcycling, cycling, skiing and skating.
The protections currently used in the practice of those sports are generically constituted by an outer protective shell which is rigid so as to withstand the impacts and collisions to which the athletes may be subjected during sports practice.
One or more paddings can be associated with said outer shell and are optionally covered with appropriate linings in order to improve aesthetic appearance and user comfort.
Such paddings act as deformable and compressible elements, so as to cushion and partially dampen the impact forces acting on the outer shell.
The paddings or linings can be associated with fastening means, so as to allow to fasten and immobilize the protection on the part of the body to be protected.
Those conventional protections are therefore a compromise between the user""s need for safety, which is inherent in the impact-resistance and abrasion-resistance properties of the outer shell, and the user""s need for comfort.
In most of the conventional protections, the result of this compromise privileges the safety aspect: accordingly, the main drawback of said protections is linked to the almost complete lack of ventilation openings or of transpiration members, thereby causing sweating at the protected regions of the body.
Another drawback of conventional protections is that the materials used for the paddings do not provide, in most cases, a high impact cushioning capacity and it is therefore necessary to make the paddings of considerable thickness and dimensions.
The aim of the present invention is therefore to solve the above noted problems, eliminating the drawbacks of the known art, by providing a protection implement which allows to achieve optimum breathing at the regions of the body that are covered by such protection.
Within this aim, an important object is to provide a protection implement which allows to achieve a high impact cushioning capacity, thus allowing to use more compact protections with an equal effectiveness.
Another important object is to provide a protection implement which allows to easily modify, during manufacture, the technical and structural characteristics of the protection.
Still another object is to provide a protection implement which is structurally simple and has low manufacturing costs.
This aim and these and other objects which will become better apparent hereinafter are achieved by a protection implement, particularly for sports applications, comprising at least one first outer protective rigid element, characterized in that it comprises at least one fabric element constituted by a two-sided vertical-warp knitted fabric.